The present invention relates to an authentication system and apparatus therefor which permit the implementation of a communication protocol for protecting the privacy of consumers in an electronic funds transfer or similar payment transactions through a telecommunication system.
In recent years there has been popularized settlement of accounts by an electronic funds transfer or IC card through utilization of a telecommunication system. Furthermore, much study is being given the use of a general-purpose prepaid card or electronic wallet as a substitute for cash. Once the circulation of funds through such a system is placed under the control of a particular organization, private information of consumers about their propensity to consume, etc. is accumulated or captured by the organization--and this poses serious problems from a personal privacy perspective.
One possible solution to this problem that has been proposed so far is a safe funds transfer system which makes the transfer of funds untraceable, as disclosed by David Chaum et al., for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,759,063 entitled "Blind Signature System" and in "Security without Identification: Transaction Systems to Make Big Brother Obsolute," Communications of ACM Vol. 28, No. 10, October 1985.
The blind signature system by Chaum et al. may be briefly summarized in the following outline.
A consumer (a signature client: B) creates a transformed message z by randomizing, with random numbers, an original message containing the contents of a transaction such as an amount of money (i.e. blinding the original message) and transmits the transformed message z to a bank (a prover: A). After checking the validity of the consumer B, the bank A withdraws the specified amount of money from the consumer's account, signs the transformed message z by use of a secret key d corresponding to the withdrawn amount of money and then returns the signed message z' to the consumer B. The consumer B removes the influence of the random numbers from the message z' (i.e. unblinds the message z') to obtain a variant m' of the original message m which retains the signature of the bank A, and the consumer B gives it to a shop (verifier: C) as payment. By confirming the signature of the bank A appended to the message m', the shop C judges that the message m' is worth a certain amount of money. Then the shop C receives the corresponding amount of money when supplying the message m' to the bank A. That is to say, the message m' possesses the function of a note.
Since the message z is created by applying random numbers to the original message m, the bank and a third party cannot link the transformed message z with the original m, and even if the bank and the shop should conspire, they could not associate the note m' with the transformed message z. In other words, it is impossible to know who issued the note m'. Thus, the method proposed by Chaum et al. does not allow the originator (the consumer) of the note m' to be traced back (that is, untraceable), and hence ensures the privacy of the consumer such as his propensity to consume.
With the above method, however, since the bank A needs only to sign the message z from the consumer B by direct use of the secret key d, it is infeasible to completely preclude the possibility of the consumer B decoding the signature of the bank A or leading the bank A to reveal the secret key d. If the consumer B should succeed in acquiring the secret key d, he could freely create and abuse the signature of the bank A. Accordingly, this blind signature system cannot be said to be absolutely secure in terms of safety.